Dotson Is Denied Bond, Back In Jail

December 28, 1987|By Andrew Martin.

Gary Dotson, the convicted rapist freed from prison in 1985 after his accuser recanted, was ordered back to jail Sunday by a judge who said Dotson`s failure to control his drinking was to blame for his latest arrest.

``To drink is to die, or to go to jail,`` Associate Judge Martin McDonough told Dotson during a bond hearing in the Markham branch of Cook County Circuit Court.

Dotson, 30, was arrested Saturday night and charged with battery and disorderly conduct after stabbing a 67-year-old cook in a Calumet City bar during a dispute over a sandwich, police said. His arrest came just two days after he was released from Dixon Correctional Center on a ``last-chance``

parole from Gov. James Thompson.

Thompson`s order extended the time that Dotson was to be on parole by three years and required that he agree to undergo treatment for alcoholism.

McDonough said he had been told Dotson was responding favorably to an alcohol-recovery program, but he said in an interview after the hearing:

``This guy is caught up in a compulsive pattern of behavior. Every time he drinks, he goes crazy.``

Though McDonough set bond at $1,000 on the battery and disorderly conduct charges, he ordered Dotson held without bond at Cook County Jail at the request of the Illinois Department of Corrections until it could be determined if his latest arrest violated terms of his parole.

The new charges will be referred to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

If the board rules that Dotson violated his parole, he would have to serve out the rape sentence, officials said. The next court hearing on the battery and disorderly conduct charges was scheduled for Feb. 2, regardless of the Prisoner Review Board`s decision.

Paul Klincar, chairman of the Prisoner Review Board, said the board would hear Dotson`s case after corrections officials forwarded the charges to them. Corrections officials said the charges would be presented to the review board sometime next week.

If the review board determines that Dotson has violated his parole, Klincar said, Dotson could be ordered to serve the rest of his 25- to 50-year rape sentence, but he could seek parole every year.

After a well-publicized series of hearings in 1985, Thompson commuted Dotson`s prison sentence after his rape victim, Cathleen Crowell Webb, recanted her accusation. But the governor warned at the time that Dotson could be ordered to serve out his sentence if he got into trouble.

A spokesman said Thompson had no comment on Dotson`s latest arrest.

In an interview after the bond hearing, Thomas Breen, Dotson`s lawyer, said Dotson had been drinking because his wife, Camille, had told him a few hours after his release on Christmas Eve that she would seek a divorce.

``That, I think, pushed this alcoholic over the edge,`` Breen said. ``I think he regrets that he took that first drink.``

Dotson has been arrested several times on alcohol-related charges since 1985 and most recently was jailed after his wife told police he had beaten her and threatened to kill their infant daughter last Aug. 2. Camille Dotson later dropped the complaint against her husband, but officials ordered him held without bond, alleging that he had violated parole.

In arguments before McDonough, Breen said Dotson tried to avoid the quarrel in the Zig Zag Club, a restaurant and bar in Calumet City, but got

``caught right smack in the middle.``

Breen contended that Dotson telephoned police, using the name of a friend, to alert them to the altercation.

According to Police Sgt. Terry Nagl, Dotson was drinking in the Zig Zag Club about 8 p.m. and ordered a sandwich for a woman he was with.

Dotson refused to pay for the sandwich when it arrived, complaining that it contained too many peppers. The cook, Mary Slaughter, demanded the money, and Dotson began shouting racial epithets and obscenities. According to police, Dotson then stabbed Slaughter`s hand with an unidentified sharp metal object. She was treated for a puncture wound but was not seriously injured, Nagl said.